Arctic – 4 out of 5
Mads Mikkelsen is a tremendous actor. I first saw him in Casino Royale and found him to be an interesting villain but never really thought much about him beyond that. That is to say until Hannibal came along and I really got to experience what a tremendous talent he is (and, this is just me here, but he is the best Hannibal Lecter there is). Since then, I’ve definitely paid attention and was stoked to see him get aboard the big franchise players like the MCU and Star Wars. When I heard he was in a film called Artic that came out last year and was said to be an incredible feature, I had to check it out.
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| Cold and empty...like my heart. |
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| He looks so peaceful, I wanna give him a goodnight kiss on his forehead. |
H. Overgård (Mikkelsen) is stranded in the Arctic Circle with little hope of rescue. Every day he fishes for his food, finds sheltered in his crashed plane, and attempts to send a distress beacon. One day hope arrives in the form of a helicopter but the strong winds causes the transport to crash; resulting in the pilot dying and the passenger (Maria Thelma Smáradóttir) is gravely injured. Overgård takes her in and does what he can to take care of her injuries but, as he scrounges up valuable items from the crash, he finds a map that promises a rescue station only a few days walk away. Now, with new determination, Overgård collects what they need to survive, straps the woman to a sled, and heads out into the unforgiving elements and attempts to get rescued.
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| That's how they're supposed to land, right? |
It can be hard to tell a good story of realistic survival that doesn’t fall into very specific pitfalls. There’s always the real possibility that the tale will start to get boring because you are watching the same thing happening for extended periods of time. While if experienced, being stuck in a desert can be a traumatic experience but watching a person march endlessly across the sands doesn’t make for something very engaging from a viewing standpoint. Just the opposite, if you make the tale too interesting by including lots of constantly changing variables then you have made the tale too fictional. There’s a difficult balance to find where what you are seeing is both realistic and interesting but never repetitive or dragging. Arctic was able to achieve this balance and also do much more as it explores elements that I never think of in survival movies.
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| "Are we there yet?" |
Arctic not only does a great job of telling a tale of survival that feels realistic and never gets repetitive and boring with its realism but it also does a terrific job of building the suspense, conflict, and tension. As Overgård marches further and further away from the camp he used to call home the peril he encounters starts to grow. This helps keep the story interesting and keeps you invested in the characters as you actively cheer them on to make it. Ultimately, though, the two things I felt this movie do exceptionally well is how strikingly simple they kept it and exploring the little things one doesn’t think about when watching a story about survival. Very little dialogue is ever spoken in the film and Overgård’s history or the circumstances of him being stranded is never explored but you never feel robbed of character development. The story treats you to teases of who he is but gives you just enough where you become invested in him. The film is basically spending all its time showing you what type of person he is rather than who he is as a character and it made it insanely easy to sympathize as it went this route.
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| Plot Twist: The polar bear was there to help him but he can't speak a human language and his roars were misinterpreted. |
There’s a point in the film where we get a sense that Overgård has been alone in the cold for a long period of time. After saving the young woman and bringing her back to his airplane-based camp, he is laying her on his makeshift bed and, as he eases her down, he stops for a second and realizes that he is touching another human being and he has a moment where he just holds her and rests his head on her shoulder. It’s a simple moment but one that spoke volumes as it explores not only what a person has to do in order to survive on their own but also what they lose in the isolation. Think about it, we’ve all been lonely and have complained to our friends when we haven’t had a date in weeks or months or a year but imagine being trapped in the cold and not seeing another soul. This exploration of facing what you’ve lost is shown again after he gets a portable propane stove and gets to feel heat. These moments are very small but they did so much to show what Overgård was going through, what he had already undergone and what is pushing him forward. It really made the film both simplistic and dynamic at the same time.
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| Describing this scene can easily make the scenario sound creepy but I found it to be such a simple and powerful moment. |
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| In fairness, she was really good at being injured... I hope they really didn't hurt her for the film. |
It’s a bit of a bummer that we really don’t see much from Maria Thelma Smáradóttir in this film. She’s basically unconscious the entire film and feels more like a prop than a character but Mads Mikkelsen is doing a tremendous job with his performance. The simplicity that makes this story so strong is also seen in Mikkelsen’s performance as he is able to portray so much and exert so little effort in order to express it. I already mentioned the little moments like experiencing human touch and warmth for the first time and the movie is filled with this type of fantastic non-verbal acting. This film just proves, once again, that Mikkelsen is a truly captivating performer who has an unbelievable range.
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| Warm the cold with your smoldering glance, Mikkelsen. |
Arctic is an extremely captivating film about survival. Its simplicity ends up speaking volumes when it concerns human drama, its suspense builds at a great pace, the performance from Mikkelsen is amazing and it concludes in a truly fantastic and satisfying way. While the replay value might be low on this one I did find it to be an amazingly constructed movie and a terrifically told tale.
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